


Tedium

by frostwitch



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2, Super Dangan Ronpa 2.5
Genre: Angst, Hinata Hajime has depression and is suicidal, Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito-centric, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Oneshot, POV Hinata Hajime, Post-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Post-Killing School Life (Dangan Ronpa), Short One Shot, Suffering Komaeda Nagito, Tired Hinata Hajime, remnants of despair, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28453695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostwitch/pseuds/frostwitch
Summary: Hinata has a lot on his mind. He takes the time he spends monitoring Komaeda's condition to reflect on his actions.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 2
Kudos: 70





	Tedium

Hinata stares out the window, eyebrows knit together the way they always do when he’s thinking hard. He’s greeted by a looming, impenetrable wall of endless grey that might as well be an unwelcome reflection of his own thoughts. 

Komaeda still hasn’t emerged from his comatose state, evidenced by the peaceful expression on his face as he slumbers, white lashes tightly sewing his eyelids shut. Not even a single strand of saliva seals his lips together; petal pink and parted slightly, as if to indicate a brief pause in speech before resuming another one of his infamous tirades on the importance of hope. 

The way things look, Komaeda’s going to be the last of them to wake up. 

That, or the only one who doesn’t. 

Adjusting the security camera in the room to zoom in on Komaeda’s face, Hinata pretends he’s examining him for signs that his condition is worsening. He’s never been good at lying, knows damn well he’s lying to himself right now. But one of his talents--he’s not sure which; Ultimate Conversationalist? Perhaps Ultimate Psychologist--makes him surprisingly convincing this time. This time, he’s able to convince himself that he’s doing this as a good samaritan, out of the kindness of his heart, and nothing more. 

He studies the monitor’s screen intently, waiting for Komaeda to wheeze or sigh, to give him  _ some  _ sign of life to cling to with the hope in every bone in his body, but nothing happens. 

Five minutes pass. Then ten. Then fifteen, and a dull ache tucked up under the back of his skull throbs to life. Ebbs for a couple moments, then flows, flooding the recesses of his brain with an unpleasant quiver that draws the corners of his mouth into a grimace. 

Hunger rakes the inside of his belly, trying to claw its way up and out before he loses consciousness. Hinata pays it no mind; courtesy of his glorified lobotomy, he knows how many weeks, days, hours, and minutes he can go without food, perhaps even right down to the very second. It’s a dangerous amount of self-discipline afforded to someone whose only motivations left to live are protecting his friends, and throwing himself at challenges to temporarily escape the iron clutches of boredom. 

He’s turned down multiple invitations to have lunch in the foundation’s cafeteria, and at this point most of his classmates know better than to ask. (Still, at least twice a week, Sonia or Owari bring him meals packaged neatly in a small styrofoam container.) It’d be good to get away from Komaeda for a little while, he thinks. To get up and stretch, walk up and down the beach, go for a morning swim; all of the above and more, anything to clear his head and drain the hazy fog that plagues him.

The thing is, somewhere in the midst of all that fog, there’s an itch he can’t quite scratch.

It’s not somewhere he can reach without ripping his skin open and digging through the bone--one not so different from the itch that creeps around the crooked scar that encircles his scalp, making the stitches there stretch and burn unbearably hot. 

Though if he did that, it would do very little to satisfy him in the end, and just wind up causing problems for everyone else. He should feel bitter at how frequently he puts others’ wants and needs before his own, but he doesn’t feel anything at all. There are plenty of things that need to be done, specifically between now and when Naegi finishes the necessary preparations to make the island into a permanent home for former fugitives (a concept that strikes Hinata as comical at best). 

He should be helping Souda repair the ship they’ll steer back to Jabberwock, helping Hanamura gather and properly store perishables for the journey (and the first five months on the island), helping Sonia calculate how to best divide up her country’s resources between its now diminished population, he should be helping  _ someone  _ with something more important. But instead, he’s sitting in a dark and musty office and staring at a motionless body on a screen, an activity no more stimulating than watching paint dry.

Maybe the reason he’s decided not to make himself more useful is one born out of spite. Not towards the others, but rather himself, and the men who made him a monster. 

Or maybe it’s a little more selfish. Maybe it’s because gazing at Komaeda’s sleeping form causes something deep inside him to stir, something he assumed had permanently fallen dormant long before the killing game took place. 

Part of him thinks it would be nice if his friends made more of an effort to reach out to him. Threw caution to the wind, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, insisted on dragging him away from his work, and marched him down to the cafeteria for a proper lunch. But the cold fingers of logic never fail to snap him back to reality, remind him they’ve only kept him around for this long because he’s useful, that they need as much distance from him as possible. 

Who is he to deny them that?

Maybe it’s true to say they wouldn’t be better off without Hinata and all his shiny new talents, but without his hand in the violent end of Hope’s Peak Academy, none of them would be in this situation in the first place. It’s not guilt talking (he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to feel guilty, even if he should), merely calculated rationality and entirely objective self-evaluation.

No, he shouldn’t be ashamed of himself; the only thing he ‘should be’ is dead. The world would be better off if he’d died quietly on that operating table, away from the prying eyes of loved ones who had been sacrificed in his place. The harsh reality is, if his classmates didn’t need his talents so desperately, he would have no reason not to oblige the impulse to scratch that itch and put himself out of his misery.

Komaeda's eyelids twitch. 


End file.
